Where I left off in the last blog post I was trying to figure out air fare and travel back. It didn’t go how I had hoped with American Airlines and that flight was essentially trashed. Instead I ended up on a flight with Delta and about an additional $500 over what it would have cost if we had sailed to the US Virgin islands. Regardless I was super excited to get back and see family and friends!

My new flight with Delta took me from Antigua at 9am to San Juan, Puerto Rico where I had a 2 and a half hour layover. After Puerto Rico I got to another layover in Atlanta. Finally back on real, mainland US soil. Unfortunately, my next and final destination was Chicago which was experiencing some major lighting storms. My 7pm flight got delayed to 8pm, then to 8:45, then to 9, then to 11, and then again to 1am. It was delayed to 1am to allow for a crew change as their shifts were over. No new pilots showed up so we got pushed back to 6am. Delta gave us a bunch of airlines snacks and bottled water for the night. In the morning after another in air delay we finally made it to Chicago. I had a train and bus ticket booked out of Chicago, but cancelled them as my friend Ashley happened to be in Chicago for a job interview. Luckily she offered to drive me, so I got my train and bus ticket refunded which I would have actually missed anyways due to all the delays.

Sticking to my original plan I made it back to Central on the Thursday before their graduation weekend. I kept a surprise and just walked into the apartment to surprise them. They might have figured out the surprise, but we had a good time none the less. I am really happy with all travels and adventures, but part of me wishes I would had another year with these guys. Each one of them has shaped me in some sort of way and I am appreciative of that. As a boy from Pigeon, I have to say that my black cultural education benefited greatly from our diverse group. No matter what, I know this won’t be the last time I see these guys, but its sad, nonetheless, to close this chapter of our lives together. Though being in the US again was slightly emotional in itself, I am glad I could be there for the goodbyes.

After spending some time up at Central I headed to Saginaw and Bay City were I saw a lot of my close high school friends. I went to church in Bay City and got to see a lot of families that I am close with. Then a couple of us went golfing which was a lot of fun. That night at about 10pm I got dropped off in my driveway by some friends and surprised my parents! They were happy to see me and felt good to be home. I went in my room and noticed the painting my mom had bought for me hanging on the wall. That verse, unsurprisingly, had meant a lot to me as I traveled. Then I went out the next night to see one of my favorites things from home, a sunset over Lake Huron.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Then, after getting car insurance renewed and a little work I drove my car to the West side of Michigan to visit my aunt and uncle and my brother, sister-in-law and their little girls. It was really nice catching up with everyone and sharing my stories. It was especially fun to play with my nieces! They had grown a lot and the youngest who was barely talking when I left was now babbling in full sentences.

Overall, it feels good to be back! I have so much to look back on and be thankful for, but also so much to be thankful for right here at home! I am so blessed with amazing family and friends. I can’t wait to see what adventures lie for us in the future!

I made it!! I was planning on arriving in the US Virgin islands, but instead here I am in Antigua.

It’s a long story, but pretty much the captain and I didn’t get a lone the greatest. I could tell from the outset that he was an odd guy. His social skills were off and he was terrible at communicating and leading in a way a captain of a ship should. That’s not the biggest deal to me. You can be a weirdo as long as you know how to sail a boat. And you know what? He could sail. So I made it safely across! Thanks be to God for that and that’s the real accomplishment in the first place.

However, I had a flight booked from the US Virgin islands and he decided to go Antigua instead, simply because he wanted to and didn’t feel like sailing to the US Virgin islands anymore. Before I booked the flight I consulted with him about different places that had cheap flights home, like Grenada, Barbados, and the US Virgin islands. He said any of them were fine. He didn’t seem super confident about it though and I tried to draw some commentary on it out of him, but nothing.. So now I have a flight booked that is essentially useless. Here in Antigua I looked for flights from this island to the US Virgin islands, but due to hurricane Irma a lot of the inter Carribean airlines are still out of commission. There were some $600 or so flights to get me to my flight on time, but they had crazy layovers in Newark or something like that. I’d be better off just buying a new flight home. I sent an email to American Airlines, with whom I have my original flight home, so we’ll see what they can do for me.

The journey itself started with me arriving in the Canary islands off the coast of Africa. It was a 45 minute flight from Western Sahara, which was necessary since I couldn’t find a boat to take me there from Africa directly. There I was lucky enough to get picked up by the captain who I made contact with throgh an online service called FindaCrew.net. Seemed like a good start and he was pretty nice at first, though I could tell he was already a little off. But hey as long as he can sail a boat! I definitely learned on this leg of my travels that I can be a little to naive sometimes. We got to his boat and spent the next couple of days doing repairs and getting things ready. Then, with two girls he had met before, we sailed from Gran Canaria (the main island) to La Gomera. In La Gomera we stocked up on produce and did the last preparation. Then we set off!!

The first three days I was sea sick. That wasn’t much fun. Also I quickly learned that he was a stickler about how much food I ate. He said he had more food on board when we bought the produce, but there wasn’t as much as I anticipated. Also back on land one of the earlier days of our relationship he told me he was “disappointed in me” when I ate the leftover food from the day before. He said, “I eat too” all upset. In honesty, that portion which was apparently egregious to him wasn’t even enough to fill me up. People who know me know I like to eat a lot, but I had toned it down on the road especially since food in Paris was mind bogglingly expensive.

Anyways, his typical meal was some rice and some cooked vegetables in small small portions. I tried to do my own cooking once during the first days of the trip and I cooked two eggs. He made some comment about it and though it was very indirect I knew in his poor communication skills that meant he didn’t approve. So from then on I left the cooking to him, which is how I felt he preferred it. I of course did the dishes always. Downside to him cooking was that there was only one or if I was lucky two meals a day. I had my oatmeal in the morning and then if I was lucky maybe two bowls of rice and vegetables the rest of the day. Though, 50% of the time it was only one bowl. It wasn’t until day 10 on the sea that I started finding the canned tuna to add to my meals out of necessity. In the beginning I couldn’t tell the difference between sea sickness and hunger, but as the sea sickness subsided I realized I was spending most of the day and going to bed hungry.

Eventually I adapted to the lack of food like I did to the sea sickness, but that didn’t stop fantasies. I fantasized about any fast food restaurant, about ice cream, and this very specific fantasy of a peanut butter sandwich made with oatmeal cream pies as the bread. I haven’t had peanut butter since I left the US, so that’s one of the things at the top of my list.

More about being at sea! After a week or so I started to get really sick of the smell of nothing but salt water. I would take deep breaths and be left uncontent. I missed the smell of leaves or of any vegetation mixed in with the fresh air. I even started smelling this piece of wood on the boat just to smell something different.

Another observation was that on every single day of the 19 journey I saw a bird. Even in the middle of the ocean, thousands of miles from land. We saw a total of 5 ships during the journey. During one 12 hour period we saw 3 vessels, which led to the conclusion that we were crossing a shipping route between Brazil and Europe. We mostly saw these ships at a distance, never closer than 5 miles or so. Closer to the Carribean we saw a cruise ship looking like the Las Vegas of the ocean. It always felt odd to see another ship. We would go days without seeing anything but water, but then there’s another ship that has a very relatable experience to the one I’m having – spending days at sea with similar trials and tribulations.

Sailing is extremely boring. There is an autopilot that does the steering and an automatic alarm that goes off if we get close to other ships. So you literally don’t have to do anything. Instead I spent time reading, listening to podcasts that I wisely downloaded before leaving, and just staring out and watching the waves hit the side of the boat. It left way to much time for thinking. At points it was extremely depressing. I thought alot how this is what real extreme cases of depression must feel like. Being trapped somewhere where with no end in sight. Surrounded by water the only way off the boat is to jump in the water, which is desth because you’ll never be found. Not to worry, I wasn’t that depressed, but I did start to miss my family and friends a lot more. The anticipation of getting home made it pretty tough to watch those waves hit the side of the boat day after day. Thinking of how my family and friends especially think I’m amazing or stronger than most for traveling and being so independent and adventurous made me act extra strong so I wouldn’t let them down. It’s nice to have forms of encouragement like that along the way.

I had some Bible study podcasts downloaded and it one we fittingly went over the flood. Needless to say, I had a new perspective. Also seeing rainbows after that instilled a renewed appreciation of God’s promise to us.

Sailing west we got to sail right towards the sunsets. Lots more clouds than I expected, but there were some great sunsets. Sunsets were always a good thing to speed up time and end a day. At nights I did a lot of reading. I think I read about five books, even a 1000+ page book about the federal reserve.

We had one suprise squid hop onto the boat. I even saw him land next to me as I was sitting in the cockpit at the time. Other times you’d come outside to see flying fish that unfortunately jumped into the cockpit. If they were lucky they got saved before they baked in the sun. Also leaving the Canary islands we had several instances of dolphins swimming along with us. For the first two nights around sunset the would entertain us by jumping and zig zagging around the boat. As we got further out we didn’t see the dolphins again until Antigua.

I’ll wrap up my sailing journey with some general info. The boat was probably approximately 3000 miles the route we took. It was a 30ft (10m German boat) catamaran with two cabins. My side of the boat had my bed, a workshop with all the navigation equipment and the bathroom. The other side had the captains bed and a kitchen and table for eating. No fridge. The cabins were spacious, but I still was unable to stand straight up in them. At first, all the bending over caused me to tweak my back, but stretching helped fix that problem.

So that was the journey. God blessed me once again and kept me safe through another naive wild idea! Above picture of me on the toliet in my cabin. Hopefully I’ll be home soon! I can’t wait to endulge in some gluttonous American food!

There are some more pictures from Lake Baikal. As you can see my Russian friends are excellent photographers. I’m sure there are still yet more photos coming. Nicolai made a trip video, but I will have to figure out how to get it off the Russian equivilant of Facebook.

In Moscow I stayed with Natasha and Ivan at there house. Being recently married they furniture is a little lacking so I got a sleeping bag on the floor which was perfect for me. We took the metro and trains a lot to get around. The metro stations where usually quite beautiful. We went to the red square. I saw where Lenin’s body is and I got to see St. Basil’s! I guess Ivan the Terrible had the architects eyes removed after he built so he would never build anything as beautiful again. After the red square we went and visited Nicolai at his house and he had a giant monitor lizard in room. It’s apparently 4 meters long.. Nicolai is super interesting. He was at the best University in Russia, but dropped out and started the countries largest reptile supply company and he just recently co-founded a biotech accelerator. For the biotech accelerator he will be speaking in San Francisco this summer at a conference. I helped revise his English bio for the conference website.

Next day I went to the WW2 museum. It is always fun to see the perspective of other countries in historical events. A lot of the museum was in Russian, but from what I could get they felt they had a pretty big role in the victory. I’m not saying they didn’t, but they made Britain and the US seem like merely cheerleaders at times. The Soviet, by far, had most casualties and were the ones responsible for liberating most of the Holocaust camps. What they withstood defending the siege on Stalingrad was a real example of fighting spirit as well. On the other hand, it was actually really interesting to see some acknowledgement of the downfalls of the Soviet government and how they lead to some hardships in the war.

Then, the next day I took the bus to Kiev, Ukraine. That’s where I am at now. Waiting to head towards Budapest. I’ll have a couple connecting trains and tickets can’t be purchased in advanced so it’s all one step in front of the other! I kind of prefer that to planning ahead anyways.

The inside of this train station is pretty beautiful! I’m guessing built during the Soviet era. I also made it out to a cathedral just to see some of the city.

Now, I’m going to hurry to a market to buy some snacks for my journey before heading out! Until next time!

Bonus!!

I totally forgot about my experience at the border when I originally posted so here’s a little story on getting out of Russia and into Ukraine. The story comes straight from my personal journal.

Journal Excerpt:

The Russian border exit was rough. At first my backpack got stuck in the scanner and the guy there was yelling at me in Russian which I obviously didn’t understand. Then at the passport control I handed my passport to the lady and she didn’t even look at me before before saying a couple Russian phrases. Not understanding, she sent me back to the other side to wait. After waiting a couple of people I was called back and a young Ukrainian kid, about my age, translated. She was pretty mean right from the start. She asked where I got my visa and I told the translator Thailand. She looked at it again and the translator said, “She doesn’t believe you that you got it in Thailand.” Well great, I thought. I told the translator, “I don’t know what to tell her. I got it in Bangkok…” I laughed because she was being a little ridiculous. Then she says something in a harsh tone in Russian which provokes my translator to say, “She asked why you’re smiling.” Now I am getting a little irritated as she seems to be trying to belittle me.

(Look, you’re being totally rude and I am smiling because I think it’s ridiculous that you are going to keep me at the border after I just spent my tourist dollars in your country.)

I’m obviously a backpacker. Check my passport. Do a thorough search of my backpack… Then she continues the interrogation asking what I did in St. Petersburg. I tell the translator I never went to St. Petersburg. She’s all wound up and says that’s what it says on my visa information. I tell her that I didn’t go there so I don’t know why it says that. She doesn’t like the answer… I explained about taking the train from Irktusk to Moscow. She spends a while going back and forth through the passport pages and typing on her computer. I finally get passport back. Upon inspection the St. Petersburg confusion came from my inviting travel “sponsor” which is required to get a visa in the first place. The travel company is based in St. Petersburg. Don’t know how she didn’t understand that..

Funniest thing of the whole ordeal is that I was supposed to “register” my visa as soon as I could within getting into the country with penalties incurring after 7 days. I stayed 10 and never registered… You are supposed to register at the hotel or places where you are staying, but every place I stayed was unable to register it. I even rode a bus an hour the wrong way only to miss the immigration building hours in an attempt to register my visa. However, my only true offense was the one not brought up. Russian bureaucracy…